* cakes marathon! *

~ 28th Sept 2008 ~



I just got home from a very dear friend's house. We've known each other since kindergarten! It's her birthday, well...today i.e. but we were at her place I guess you would say yesterday, considering it is now 0142hours.out from under the ring but thank goodness yours truly did a brilliant job with the paper cutting. And a couple of hours later, I had a beautiful heart shape cake. I wanted to do a marble effect but could not remember how and ended with a bit of red batter blopped in the middle like a heart. At least I now know what will happen when I do that again. :P




On friday after school, I started preparing to make a cake for her as I volunteered. I checked my pans and found my heart shaped ring mould. It does not have a base so to speak. So I had to use baking paper or grease paper or whatever you might call it.....draw the outline and cut the sides and place it inside the mould seated on a tray. Setting those aside I started on making two batches of butter cake batter. Simply because I have a cheap but effective little mixer that allows me to make the most... 1 and a half recipe batch at a time.



I was quite nervous because I was anticipating the batter to ooze

While the orange butter cake was in the oven, I made a batch of sugee batter and put it away. That night, I baked the sugee and the house was already smelling like a cake house. Birthday girl likes sugee cake but as not many people do, I made a small one just for her. Next I made a small batch of royal icing with the meringue powder I bought and it was not bad, probably because I used lemon juice as well.

Anyway, there I was at the table with a plate, tryin on every icing tip I had to see what designs were available. After a long hard day, I was left with not much creativity from whatever lacking bits of creativity there is in me to start with! You have to be smart to figure out what these tips can do and I was 'ooo....', 'ah...' and 'oh... like this....' and the occassional grunt when I can't get it right.
I ended with a very late night, dragged myself out in the morning because there was another cake to make and I had yet.... not found a frosting recipe for the cake!!! I decided to do one with a filling as the cake had sunk a little in the middle.
It was a lot of googling and I finally ended up with Italian Meringue buttercream as they said it held quite ok in this hot weather. Combining two recipes, I started out at noon (googling all morning and same time trying to get psyched up for the challenge ahead...) with the task. It ended up runny and wouldn't set and I panicked but remembered reading how to overcome it. Which was to refrigerate awhile and whip again. Phew...! Thank you to people sharing online!!! I must say, this recipe is absolutely delicious and not sickeningly sweet.
http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/07/project-wedding-cake-swiss-buttercream/
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1541138431&channel=716129977
http://wscwong.blog.friendster.com/2005/10/italian-meringue-buttercream/
These were the 3 sites that helped me and voila! As you can see, my icing skills are very amateurish. My free hand text needs proper spacing and sizing and better styling. *rolling eyes* My colours were marred by the green and red, first time using the colour paste and not as nice and vivid as I expected. Sigh.....
Crumb coating went ok. While giving it some time to settle, I made the chocolate frosting for the mud cake. Oh, I had earlier prepared a mud cake as well. Heh heh...
Then it was the start of a challenging quest....frost the cake as smoothly as possible. Failed, failed, failed!! Wah..........!!! Just when it was right, I would spoil another bit. Yeah yeah...loads of practise I was told. Eventually I got it right and I realised not much time left!
Stressed with time and not even figured out my wardrobe....you can see why I botched the deco...twice! Hence two pics. I have a dirty habit of filling in spaces and so a simple design became rather over crowded.



However my sweet friend liked it and many remarked the buttercream was good. The mud cake was a hit and later the little sugee was also tried, tested and graded. All in all, it was a beautiful night with loads of old and new friends and delicious food and entertainment and my personal joy, all my cakes were by majority well met and received. Checked. :)






P/S: Please do not google and try something out the first time on the actual day itself! I was lucky The buttercream was good. :P




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